The final load of Toronto's garbage bound for Michigan is slated to leave the city Thursday, ending a flow to stateside landfills that began in 1998 at 30 trucks a day and peaked at 140 daily in 2003, after the Keele Valley landfill in Vaughan was closed.

Along the way, Michigan politicians and citizens raised a stink about taking Toronto's trash, while the city pleaded that it had no alternatives, with no landfill of its own (until 2007) after a plan to ship garbage to an old northern mine site was shot down in 2000.

"It's very exciting," Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon says of the demise of the Michigan convoy. "It's about time we stopped shipping to someone else, because none of us would like that in our backyards."

Michigan's Carlton Farms landfill was the only game in town until mayor David Miller announced the $220 million purchase of the Green Lane landfill near London in 2007.